


Safety

by raedbard



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Porn Battle, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-20
Updated: 2008-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:20:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He writes her letters she doesn't know how to reply to."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safety

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle V, to the prompt 'ink'.

He writes her letters she doesn't know how to reply to. Holiday postcards, scraps of paper headed up with the name of his current no-hope candidate, once an invitation to someone else's wedding, on the back of which he has written:

_You'd suit the dress better than the bride. Longer legs._

She grins, and runs the tip of her finger over his handwriting, over the curl of the first 'o'. He hasn't signed it. He never does. He must suppose she knows it's him. He's right.

For a while the letters stop. But she is busy, and so is he; when she misses them she tells herself he'll write again. When he has time.

He doesn't send her an invitation to his own wedding, with the result that she doesn't know about it until six months afterwards, when, seeing him for the first time in almost a year and a half and drunk on the depths of his eyes, she leans in to kiss him, and he shifts away.

She hadn't noticed the ring. Probably because she hadn't wanted to see it. Probably because she has never been one of those women who check a man's left hand first.

Neither has she ever been the kind of woman who would want what it would have to be now - a tired grasping for intimacy, a set of worn-out promises between the two of them, not spoken but written, on their bodies as if in ink: wanting him a way she does not understand, so unlike anyone else. The blank place when he is gone not in her heart or between her thighs but in a small, sharp part of her mind which only he seemed to have noticed, of all her lovers. Which makes it sound, she thinks, as though it isn't about the sex (not about wanting him so much when of all the men in her life he is the one she wants to see happy, and this is nothing that will accomplish that) when sometimes she thinks that is all it is.

The way it would be comes to her like a series of letters, written in ink:

His fingers curled gently over her throat, and the ring cold across her pulse.

Her hand pushing his chin back to expose his neck so she can remember how pale is the skin there, how tender-looking.

The redness of his mouth, open for air, caught in the centre of her, caring for her imperfectly, but deeply.

Her fingers lost between her legs, feeling the hardness of her hipbone in the flesh of her arm, and his eyes watching, dangerously.

The heat of his chest pressed up against her back and her chest pressed into the door and his knee between her thighs, the brush of the fabric of the pants he is still wearing setting off every nerve in her skin.

Kissing his shoulders through his shirt and tracing the line of his collarbone through the white cotton and wondering if you can find a man like him beautiful.

His weight on top of her, absolute safety and terrible danger all at once, making her come again and again.

She would never want to let him go.

He would always be gone by the time she wakes up.

There is no letter to tell her about the divorce either, and since the ring is still on his finger when he comes to fetch her, she assumes nothing. It's in the car, on the drive over to the airport for the flight to New Hampshire, listening to the sound of his breathing fill up the space between them that he says it.

_My wife ... left._

No self-pity, just the facts. Almost like an addition to the stream of L.A. news which is coming in from the car radio. But when he turns to her, just for a moment, with a little tilt of his head, she sees the sadness in the eyes which are now avoiding hers, and a broken heart.

She reaches out and places her hand over his and his fingers loosen from the head of the gearstick and twist together with hers, squeezing hard, warm, dry hands and blunt, heavy fingers. His eyes are still full up with loss and hers start to fill up with the aching which has just started in her chest as she looks at him. She smiles, or tries to; he tries to smile back. She kisses his cheek and she hears the puff of breath he lets out as she does, sounding surprised, as though he hadn't realised she loved him though now it's so obvious that he's embarrassed by his stupidity.

He takes her to D.C. and intimacy changes: no more letters, no more ink. Now just the press of their hands together, like safety.


End file.
